A review by xabbeylongx
The Woods by Harlan Coben

challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Spoilers Ahead: 
This book was another example of how excellent a writer Coben is. Another thrilling novel, one I would definitely recommend. 
We follow Paul Copeland throughout. His wife passed away from illness, which left him alone with his daughter, Cara, and he’s an attorney. When he was younger, he had a summer romance with a girl called Lucy at a camp, and when he left his post (he as a ‘guard’) to, *ahem*, mess around with her, his sister went missing, as did three other campers. Two bodies were found as remains, but not his sister. 
After years of Paul and Lucy not talking (I should point out that Lucy’s father owned the camp, and their family was put through the wringer for not having good enough security) Lucy receives a journal which has very similar events to what happened that night, except it states that they both lied. When they start to look into it further together, they are lead down a series of different, confusing paths. Everyone believes her to be dead, but Paul has a different feeling about it. There’s a body that arises, the third body that supposedly went missing that night, but he’s grown up and has only just been murdered. That give him hope, albeit, only a small amount, that his sister is still alive and out there. 
Meanwhile, he is working on a TW r*pe case, and he has been getting pressure from the other side to drop whatever he’s doing, otherwise information about him will be dug up. 
There is a lot of digging, and Ira, Lucy’s father, who suffers from Alzheimers, asks to speak to Paul directly. When he does, Ira pulls out a gun, and shoots him. He only stops when Lucy begs him not to, and he, instead, shoots himself. 
They find remains of a skeleton just like Camille (Paul’s sister) but he doesn’t believe it’s her. After a visit to ‘Red Onion Prison’ - I love that name - to see the person who was assumed to have done the murders, he admits to it. He says that Gil Perez (the third victim) wanted to play a trick on one of the girls who was acting ‘slutty’ and ‘teasing’ him, so they wanted to play a prank on her. Too late, they realised he was actually a murderer, and he killed them. Gil and Camille managed to escape, but with them digging now, they had resurfaced. Camille is alive, and living with Paul’s Uncle. The murderer also tells him that Lucy was an accomplice. Her father was a drug addict, and the murderer threatened her father and so she pulled Paul away from his post, so the killings could be done. 
Honestly, writing this review there is a lot that doesn’t make sense to me. There are a lot of twists and turns, a lot of different things and different people to remember, and almost too many plot twists - almost - that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Some of it, I didn’t really see the relevance. Like the IRA stuff, it was mentioned briefly throughout and then dropped? And the remains that were found (apparently Paul’s father strangled her, and she knew where Camille was this whole time and she found out he had sold her mum and dad to the government, and she was going to spill?) was Paul’s mother, and was she pregnant? I swear that’s what they said, and if that’s the case, don’t they have a sibling out there somewhere? But, to be fair the book is very entertaining, and I like being kept on my feet. So, whilst sometimes it’s a bit difficult to get your head around (and also some of the language is slightly misogynistic, but I don’t know if that is just me being sensitive) but I would definitely recommend! 
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